Risens Thread LiptonCambell: How has life become so complex? Why does it seem like it wasn't always that way? What drove this change?  oh_good_laughs: These are all questions of opinion, there really isn't a perfect intellectual panacea to this. My thoughts, are a product of faith. LiptonCambell: So? I'm asking for opinions and thoughts here risen. If you have no idea, that's all you have to say. LiptonCambell: So then I take it questions such as the ones above aren't worth considering? And where is everyone else? Damnit Sixty, I know you're reading this!  StuckInTheSixties: Yeah, I definitely was keeping track, Lipton. But I was going to abstain from any comment here, hoping it would just be you and Risen. It appears he's lost his appetite for meaningful discourse. LiptonCambell: Well, if you look back millions of years, life is capable of far less complex life than what we have now. Are you saying life has not changed? I'm confuzzled. StuckInTheSixties: Lipton says: "Well, if you look back millions of years, life is capable of far less complex life than what we have now." Unless one-celled organisms and humans were created during the same week. * *not my point of view StuckInTheSixties: Oh, I'd have to disagree with that. Technology began much earlier than the invention of the wheel. Here's the definition of the word "technology": technology application of tools and methods; the study, development, and application of devices, machines, and techniques for manufacturing and productive processes It was the "devices" that came first. The earliest use of what you could accurately call "technology" would likely be when an object of some sort, a bone, a rock, whatever, was picked up and used to strike something else. The next step would have been when it was figured out that an object with a sharp edge could be used to cut things, or an object with a point could be used to pierce things, etc. Another technological step: Things to tie things with, like strips of animal skin, vines, etc. A HUGE technological step: Use and control of fire Tools. Weapons. Vessels. Agriculture. These are all various kinds of technology that preceeded the wheel by thousands of years. The wheel is a "machine." It came MUCH later. I suggest you Google this phrase: "earliest technology."  hitsugaya252: No life has changed ok i wouldnt go back to million yrs. But so far in this 19 yrs experience, life was complex in each of the time and as i grow, past complexities appears easy and smooth whereas today's problem is still the same i.e uncertainity of tommorow. Or if you're drawing inferences according to this 'technology'. I can tell that life has become much more luxurious that it used to be. 'humans are discontent social being'. This discontentment and the ultimate desire for luxury and happiness brought human civilization from the Stone Age to the modern era and it'll still further untill the end of time.  ☀▃▂▁/V\iragε▁▂▃☀: looking forward to a new luxery technology of showers... you'll have as many jets as you want and when you've finished your shower, you'll just stay where you are and be flash-dried by some combination of lights, heat and thermal energy...even your hair will be dried quickly within 10 seconds or less! around 2019 we can have our own ROSY (robot on cartoon the jetsons) on voice command they can cook, clean, serve drinks and meals, make beds, feed pets and put away laundry. LiptonCambell: >>>Or if you're drawing inferences according to this 'technology'. Don't look at me....I dunno where the hell all this technology talk came from..... nonetheless hits, Im talking about throughout the history of life- not the last 2 decades lol StuckInTheSixties: Topic shift - sequence of events: ~ Lipton asks a reasonable question. ~ Predictably, Risen ducks Lipton's question. ~ hitsugaya252 asks a puzzling question which is barely on-topic. ~ Lipton takes his best swing at answering hitsugaya252's puzzling question. ~ SITS makes a snide comment on the absurd implausibilty of the Book of Genesis. ~ Pokerman deviates completely from the topic with an irrelevant, and completely inaccurate, observation about technology. ~ Unable to resist, SITS provides a detailed correction to that inaccurate observation. ~ Completely out of character, instead of calling me stupid, a moron, or issuing some other insult, Pokerman gracefully accepts the correction. ~ hitsugaya252 adds a confusing, irrelevant rumination about his life, and adds an even more puzzling opinion that all human advancement in technology is based on "the desire for luxury." ~ SillyLaura, true to her name and nature, offers thoughts on hi-tech showers, and waxes nostalgic for "The Jetsons." ~ Lipton attempts, unsuccessfully, to steer the thread back to topic. ~ SITS relieves 5 minutes of boredom with a "sequence of events" list. ☀▃▂▁/V\iragε▁▂▃☀: ok ok...sheesh ..I'll be on topic Travelers have made the world complex Knowledge is POWER Simple answer for complexities StuckInTheSixties: I think he was referring to "life" in a different context. Still, those are insightful comments. Indeed, travel made life for humans far more complex. ☀▃▂▁/V\iragε▁▂▃☀: test tube babies....stem cell reproduction... robotic extensions from the mind.....etc... my answer still stands!  Smiling_Bandito: and think, as complex as life has become on earth, it's stupendously simple when you compare that to the complexity of the universe. Humankind is tryin to catch up but it's gonna take one helluva long time for us to even understand how complex everything is, much less compete. We are outclassed. Big Time. StuckInTheSixties: Well ... The human brain is awfully complex. It's the most complex structure known to us. It's made of neurons ... lots and lots of very complex neurons: The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the one hundred billion neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 1 quadrillion synapses. This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 100 trillion to 500 trillion synapses. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron You say: "We are outclassed ..." That implies we are outclassed by SOMEONE or SOMETHING. Who/what would that be? Smiling_Bandito: we are outclassed by nature itself. The brain's complexity is something man barely understands, much less is able to duplicate. Hell the brain is so complex that we can only consciously use 10% of it (on average). If we cannot fully understand the systems that make us and we live with them everyday, how can we expect to manage to understand the universe, which is orders of magnitude more complex than even the human brain. StuckInTheSixties: I can't argue that. Well, maybe I can. I'm not sure about "orders of magnitude more complex." Certainly, we haven't discovered any single structure more complex. I suppose you could say that a galaxy, or a galactic cluster, is more complex, but that would be more of a commentary about the size, the volume, the bigness of it. I guess we're bantering over the meaning of the word "stucture." But you have a point. The universe is very big, very complex, and we have only put the tiniest scratch in the surface of understanding it. Smiling_Bandito: I say orders of magnitude more complex in a sense that we as an organism are just one of the many many complex things on this planet. The variety of species of things on this one little mudball is barely conceivable. And yet we inhabit 1 planet that revolves around 1 star. 1 star among millions just in our own neighborhood. There are more stars then there are neurons in the the brains of the entire human race. And each of these stars has a possibility of supporting life, maybe recognizable to us, maybe requriring different types of real estate all together. Can we live unassisted in an atmosphere of arsnic and sulfur dioxide(like the volcanic jets in the bottom of the ocean)? Of course not. Yet in the harshest of environments we see organisms that not only survive, but thrive. Who's to say that more complex organisms could not evolve there? It's not just the largeness of the universe which makes it orders of magnitude more complex, but the possibilities that largeness implies. StuckInTheSixties: "There are more stars then there are neurons in the the brains of the entire human race." That's a very defined statement. We should be able to do the arithmetic. ~ We know how many stars there are in the known universe: best guess is 3 septillion (3x10 to the 24th) ~ We know how many neurons in a brain: 100 billion ~ We know how many people on earth: 6,775,235,741 - let's round that off smaller (it'll favor your argument that way) to 6.5 billion You are correct, sir! Gold star on the forehead! The human race has 650 quadrillion neurons collectively - 6.5 to the 17th. While we have one f^z% of a lot of neurons, the universe has one fuckity-f~*&-fx&$-Fyz* of a lot of stars. I doff my hat to you. But I question this statement: "each of these stars has a possibility of supporting life." I'm not sure, but I doubt that. Lots of stars present very hostile environments for any thing in their neighborhood. What about the stars clustered in the tightest part of a center of a galaxy? What about stars that are expanding into Red Giants? What about when you have two stars in a very tight mutual orbit (or however you'd term that)? And from a broader, more philosophical standpoint, we simply have no certainty about whether or not any stars would present conditions friendly to life. Since we only know about the kind of life we know about (so to speak), it's irrational to ASSUME that other forms of life exist. Assumptions without evidence are irrational. Period. And we have yet to be able to determine evidence of an exoplanet with water. There are lots of SUGGESTIONS for these kinds of things, primarily, the vastness and complexity of the universe which you so adroitly pointed out. But a suggestion does not evidence make. So I have a hard time with your statement that "each of these stars has a possibility of supporting life." "Possibility," in that context, is philosophical, not scientific. In the philosophical context, I'd agree completely. I'm an agnostic. I'll believe almost ANYTHING is POSSIBLE. As you say, "largeness implies" a lot. But proves nothing. I'm really enjoying this conversation, by the way. LiptonCambell: >>>Hell the brain is so complex that we can only consciously use 10% of it (on average) Urban myth. http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp | Science Chat Room 1 Person Chatting Similar Conversations |
